


Justice's Voice

by Lomonaaeren



Series: July Celebration Fics 2017 [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aurors, Blood Magic, Dark Magic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 06:12:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11594583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: After a case he botched, Auror Harry Potter has to train with Draco Malfoy to learn the difference between Dark magic, which he doesn’t always have to pursue, and evil magic, which the Aurors were formed to eradicate. He didn’t expect his lessons to get so…intense.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Another of my July Celebration fics, based on a prompt I received a few years ago. 
> 
> This is a two-shot and will have a second part.

****“So I’ll be training with the Unspeakables?” Harry asked Madam Kellen, his immediate supervisor, as he stepped off the lift into the Department of Mysteries.

“Nothing so plebian, Potter.”

The voice echoed against the dark stones of the corridor. Harry jerked and turned around, but kept his hand off his wand. After the sanctions that the Wizengamot had threatened to place him under, he wasn’t going to touch it in the Ministry unless it was a life-threatening emergency.

Malfoy stepped up to him and studied him in a leisurely way. Harry looked back at him and made sure to keep his grimace off his face. Malfoy wore heavy dark blue velvet robes that made him look as if he was on his way to a ballroom. They had small silver dots sprinkled over them that sparked like gleams of fire.

_Definitely not what Unspeakables wear._

Madam Kellen cleared her throat. “You’re to tell him only what you absolutely must, Mr. Malfoy.”

Harry clenched his teeth, but said nothing. It was true that his Occlumency was still piss-poor. Anyone could read secrets out of his head if they tried hard enough and had the right level of Legilimency.

“Of course, madam.” Malfoy studied Harry one more time, and then held out his arm and gestured grandly behind him. “We’ll go through that door. I’m to conduct your training to make sure that you understand the distinction between _Dark_ wizards and _evil_ wizards.”

Harry glanced at Madam Kellen, but she only nodded sternly at him, her thick black hair moving around her face. Harry bit back another grimace. He knew this was the lightest penalty they were willing to give him and have him remain in the Aurors, after he’d made such a mess of the Sunderstar case.

“All right, Malfoy,” he said, and walked past him. There was a plain black door there, like the one that had led to the revolving room when he was here in his fifth year. But when his flinching hand touched it, nothing happened except that it opened and revealed another lift, this one made of what looked like black metal.

Malfoy said something to Madam Kellen that Harry didn’t try to overhear, and followed him. He touched a section of the lift’s wall that looked no different from the others to Harry, and the lift whirled around a quarter of a turn and began to rapidly sink.

Harry waited with his arms folded for Malfoy to say something. But he didn’t until the lift had started slowing down at what was presumably the bottom of the shaft.

“I wondered why they were asking a Starling to train you,” Malfoy murmured. “But I think I see it now. You have some potential for the Dark Arts.”

“I don’t think I need to know Dark Arts to learn about the differences between kinds of magic,” Harry said, keeping his gaze fastened on the side of the lift. It slid soundlessly open a second later, and Harry saw a corridor ahead with subdued light glowing through one wall. It made the building—cavern, tunnel, Harry couldn’t tell what it was—look like the inside of a black diamond.

“Of course you’re going to be practicing them, Potter,” Malfoy said with easy indifference, as he walked ahead of Harry and opened a door in what looked like air. Harry started, but then followed him through the glassy panel before Malfoy could shut it. Now they appeared to be in a slightly brighter room with paneled walls and a huge fireplace. Malfoy shed his robes and floated them up to a strip of glittering marble in the wall. “How can you know how they feel otherwise?”

“But all I need to know is how to arrest the right kind of people.”

Malfoy grinned and turned around. “And that’s what an Auror does, according to you?”

“I _thought_ an Auror protected people from Dark magic, but apparently I was mistaken.”

“You trespassed on private land and interrupted an inheritance ritual. What did you think was going to happen?”

“The trespassing part I got,” Harry snapped. He’d thought he had authorization to be there, but it had become obvious, around Madam Kellen’s fifth scolding, that he didn’t. “But what the fuck is an inheritance ritual?”

Malfoy stared at him. “You don’t _know_ that?”

“No one would bloody explain it!”

Malfoy sighed as he flicked his wand at the wall and some more lights came up, brilliant white ones that made Harry wince and want to shield his eyes. “They probably assumed you knew already,” he muttered. “Most of the wizards in our world either grow up with that or don’t get jobs that require them to know these things.”

“Yes, I know all about the prejudice against Muggleborns in the Auror ranks.”

Malfoy gave him an odd glance, but said nothing except, “Why don’t you take off your robes, Potter? This is going to take a while.”

Reluctantly, Harry slid his Auror robes off his shoulders and looked up at the line of marble on the wall. He couldn’t tell how Malfoy had hung his there, unless he’d used a Sticking Charm. Harry got ready to try one, but Malfoy took them from him instead.

“I’ve spilled my blood in every corner of this room,” he told Harry softly, and flung the robes up into the air. They turned of their own free will and stuck to the marble next to Malfoy’s. “One of the more innocent applications of blood magic there is. Yet wizards who don’t understand the Dark Arts want to ban _that_ , too, of course.”

Harry sat back in his chair. Now that he could see better, he noticed a few separate circles of chairs, each of them made of a pair placed around a low central table. “What do you need to tell me that’s going to take a while, Malfoy?”

“Not tell you. Show you. Attune you.” Malfoy sat down in the other chair, which looked identical to Harry’s, and laid his hand on the table with a look of intense concentration on his face. The table shuddered, and a hole opened up in the middle of it. With a soft sound, a glittering, faceted crystal rose out of the hole and settled with a click into the wood. Harry stared, and blinked. The crystal looked like a geode, deep purple with explosions of blue and black in the facets. Malfoy arched an eyebrow at him. “You’ve never seen one of these before.”

“I’m pretty ignorant, you’re acting like.”

“You are,” said Malfoy calmly. “But this crystal will help me see how much I’m going to have to teach you.”

“How?” Harry eyed the crystal, ready to draw his wand if it spoke or something. After his experience with Tom Riddle’s diary, he tended to heed Mr. Weasley’s advice about magical things with no visible place for their brains.

“It’s hard to explain—”

“ _Try,_ Malfoy.”

“Surely by now, Potter,” Malfoy said, his voice smoother than Harry remembered from Hogwarts, “you’ve noticed that I’m not being hostile to _you._ That’s because I can’t if I’m to teach you about the Dark Arts. Teacher and pupil have to have absolute trust in each other.”

Harry stared at him. “You are _shitting_ me.”

Malfoy sat there and looked at him.

Harry sighed and laid his wand across his lap. “Okay. How will this crystal help you find out what I need to—attune, or whatever?”

Malfoy smiled, a slight, inflexible bend of his lips. “It will tell me how great your talent for Dark Arts is, how Dark your magic is. Or your soul. There are different names for it. I prefer to call it talent, because none of the names really capture the essence of the whole.” He waved a hand at what seemed to be Harry’s robes. “The crystal resonates with your talent. It shows me what kinds of explanations I need to give and what I can skip, and what sorts of spells we can start with.”

Harry tried to ignore all the warning bells sounding in the back of his head about Dark souls, and his memories of Voldemort. He focused on the crystal when Malfoy pointed his wand at it, and tried to breathe slowly and normally.

The crystal seemed to grow until it loomed over him. Harry would have asked if that was normal, but he found he couldn’t take his gaze from the crystal or speak. Sparks were leaping across the facets. Harry leaned closer, and found the chair was gone, too. He seemed to be floating in darkness, just him and the crystal.

The purple-black colors swirled in front of him, drawing him further and further in. Harry breathed, and reached out a hand because it seemed like the right thing to do. A facet hovered right in front of him, inviting him to touch it.

The minute he brushed it, a rich, deep note sounded from the crystal, one so deep that it sounded as if it was coming from _beneath_ Harry. Harry gasped. The next second, he was back in Malfoy’s room, sitting across from him while Malfoy watched him intently.

“Well.” Malfoy was smiling more broadly this time, although it still looked like a nasty expression to Harry. “You resonate at a deep, Dark level with the crystal, Harry. It’s not going to be as much of a pain teaching you as I thought it was.”

“Why call me by my first name?” Unnerved, Harry pulled back as the table opened again and the crystal sank into it.

“The bond between teacher and pupil in the Dark Arts is built on trust, I told you that,” Malfoy said softly. “And we’re going to have to descend rather _far_ to create this one. All you have are bad memories of me saying your last name. So I’ll replace those memories.”

Harry bit his lip against what he wanted to say. He had botched up the Sunderstar case, he repeated to himself. So he had to be here. He had to pass this test, whatever it really was, and then he could go back to being a regular Auror.

“Fine,” he said. “Can you tell me what you mean by being a Starling? And where am I going to sleep? And eat?” Madam Kellen had made it plain that Harry would be staying in the Ministry for the duration of his lessons, which was depressing. But Harry was resigned to it.

Malfoy gestured at the wall again, and this time the band of glittering marble lit up so that light spilled everywhere in the room. There was a small kitchen set off behind a half-wall over to the side, and Harry saw another door standing open with beds behind it. “You’ll share my kitchen and bedroom,” Malfoy said, and turned around to watch him as if waiting for his objection.

 _You want your job, you want your job,_ Harry repeated to himself. “Okay, Malfoy—”

“Draco. You say my name with hatred and contempt. It’s a name for a boy you’ve made up in your head. You’re going to say _my_ name, and mean me, your teacher.” Malfoy’s eyes were as dark and intent as the crystal.

“Okay, Draco,” Harry said. “Can I have something to eat? And why do they call you lot Starlings?”

“Of course,” Malfoy said, and waved his hand again. The cabinets in the kitchen opened, and plates and forks and bowls floated out. Harry blinked as another cabinet with the slight glow of a Freezing Charm around it did the same thing, and leaves of spinach, accompanied by shredded cheese, bits of tomato and egg, and some kind of condiment tumbled free and began to arrange themselves into a salad.

“I did say I had spilled my blood _everywhere_ ,” Malfoy remarked, turning around and seeing Harry’s gape.

“And blood magic can do that?”

Malfoy nodded and lounged back into his chair. Harry leaned cautiously back, too. He supposed the chairs were more comfortable than he’d thought, since they were covered with thick, almost satiny cloth. He just hadn’t noticed because he was sitting too far forwards on the edge of his, waiting for something to happen.

“Yes. What do you know about the distinction between Dark Arts and other kinds of magic, Harry?”

Harry’s skin prickled when Malfoy called him that. He decided to ignore it. “Only that three spells are Dark for sure. The Unforgivables. And there are others, curses that I’ve trained to fight against, which—”

Malfoy held up a hand. Harry fell silent. “No,” Malfoy said. “The Unforgivables are purely evil magic, meant to cause pain or obedience or death in a subject that isn’t willing.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “Why would someone _agree_ to be tortured or die or have their will taken away?”

“If they wanted to get through a hard healing? If they wanted to suffer because they thought they owed it as a penance? If they wanted to die because no one could get them to a Healer in time, or they were suffering from a degenerative disease there was no cure for?” Malfoy cocked his head a little. “You can imagine scenarios for all of those, Harry. I know you’re more intelligent than you let on at Hogwarts.”

In and out, in and out Harry’s breaths went. “Yes, all right. But then why would you say that the Unforgivables are evil? The Killing Curse would kill someone painlessly.”

“It causes intense pain at the moment of death,” Malfoy said, and his eyes glowed with something like temper before he glanced to the side and apparently let it go. Their plates of salad floated over to them then, joined by bowls of some creamy dressing that Harry hadn’t seen before, but which smelled of lemons. “Not many people know that. But no, those spells were invented to cause unwilling deaths and pain and to draw on the ambient power, not the inner power.”

“I don’t know what you mean by ambient power.” Harry poured a little dressing on his salad and tasted it. It was delicious, much as he hated to admit that.

“The power around you, outside you,” Malfoy said, a little impatiently. Then he seemed to take a calming breath of his own, and a bite of his salad apparently settled him further. “The power from your environment. All magic other than the Dark Arts pulls on that. You have to be a witch or wizard in the first place to access it, but you pull the power in through your wand, and then release it again. The way you do air from your lungs when you exhale.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “And the Dark Arts come from—”

“Your soul. Your blood. Your own willpower. Sometimes other body fluids like tears and saliva.” Malfoy leaned forwards and smiled at him, gesturing so hard Harry thought he was going to drop his plate. “Called _dark_ because they were esoteric for a long time, just like they are now. And they come from the dark places inside you.”

Harry swallowed a mouthful and waited a moment for the flavors to stop lighting up the inside of his mouth. “Then why would it be banned by the Ministry?”

“It wasn’t always,” said Malfoy. “But it got in the way of their ideal of a meritocracy.”

Harry sighed a little. “I don’t know what that means—Draco.”

Malfoy just nodded. “I know. I’m telling you the political ideals behind it. Magic drawn from ambient power can be performed by anyone. It just depends on enough practice with the wand movements and the incantations. Most weak wizards who know that kind of magic are weak because they never studied enough to learn many spells. But the Dark Arts come from _inside you_. Think about people with weaker wills, or who don’t want to draw their own blood, or who have souls that are always wavering and indecisive. They can’t do as much as people who are stern and committed and don’t mind using blood for a purpose. The Ministry of centuries ago thought that was unfair to wizards who are weak of will.”

Harry grimaced and ate some more salad. He could totally see the Ministry doing that, really. “Okay. Then why are you here? What _are_ Starlings?”

“Starlings are birds that seem black at first, when you’re looking at them from a distance,” Malfoy said softly. “But come closer, and you see how iridescent their feathers are. Every time they move, new light shatters from them. We’re the light in the darkness of ignorance, Harry. We keep the knowledge alive, and the Ministry uses us when they need to understand Dark Arts, or understand artifacts that were empowered by blood or a wizard’s will, or need certain very specific actions performed that no one can know about. Or need someone taught.”

“If Dark magic isn’t evil, why _not_ teach it openly?”

“It would be vulnerable to the same political objections as last time,” Malfoy said calmly. “I don’t mind keeping it silent and secret, as long as the Ministry doesn’t try to stamp it out entirely.”

“You don’t mind keeping it secret from Muggleborns, either.”

“They don’t usually ask. And enough of them have apparently grown up with evil tales of imaginary witches spilling blood and wishing ill on their neighbors that they probably wouldn’t want to learn it, anyway.”

Harry held back his objections, and crunched through at least half the salad before he asked another question. Malfoy lounged back, waving his hand to get the plate to float to the kitchen when he was done.

Harry finally gave in and asked, “So I have to learn it instead of just learn _about_ it—why?”

“So you can feel it when it’s in progress. Someone who knows Dark Arts feels the difference between it and ambient magic when it’s being performed.”

“Look, I had no way of _knowing_ there wasn’t some evil magic going on at that ritual! Not only did they have a woman bound and bleeding on an altar—”

“It would have been her blood, her choice.”

“They had fires burning all around them. That sounds like ambient magic to _me_. Unless you’re going to say that they were burning their hair or something.”

“It’s likely.” Malfoy shrugged when Harry stared at him. “If you don’t want answers, you shouldn’t ask the questions, Harry. And the people who practice Dark Arts do sometimes use the trappings of ambient magic, you know, including elements like fire. The difference is that it plays a purely symbolic role in Dark magic. It’s there to influence the perceptions of the person performing the ritual. It’s secondary, a prop.”

Harry groaned and shut his eyes. “I’m never going to figure this out.”

“Let me teach you a piece of Dark magic, and then you’ll know.”

Malfoy had suddenly surged forwards as if he was about to rise from the chair, his eyes pinning Harry to his own seat. Harry paused in the act of drawing his wand, and grimaced again. This _was_ what he was here for. “All right.”

Malfoy smiled and drew a small silver dagger from his robe’s belt. “Let me cut your palm,” he whispered. “Think of the way that you’re giving the blood freely, that you’re doing this of your own free will.”

Harry wanted to object to that, but it seemed pointless. He swallowed and nodded. Then he watched Malfoy slice a small line across his palm.

The blood that danced across his hand felt different. It tingled and prickled the way his skin had when Malfoy said his first name earlier. Harry met Malfoy’s eyes and wanted to back away from the burning intensity there.

“Think about what you want the blood to accomplish,” Malfoy commanded.

Harry shut his eyes. He could only think of one thing. “All right,” he said.

“Touch the object—or the person—that will bring about your desires.”

Harry leaned carefully past Malfoy, so he wouldn’t touch him, and rubbed his bloodied hand across the table.

The blood flared for a second, with the same twinkling stars that were lost in the darkness of Malfoy’s robes, and then the light died. Malfoy clucked his tongue. “You have to _want_ this, Harry. I know you can break the Imperius Curse. You have more than enough will. _Do it_.”

Harry clenched his teeth and pressed his hand down harder, making more blood flow. It was hard not to envision Malfoy flying across the room or something, but that probably wouldn’t work if _his_ will and blood ruled the whole space.

Instead, there was a click and Malfoy said, “It worked. You’re going to be good at this, Harry.”

Harry opened his eyes and blinked. The crystal had arisen from the wooden table in front of him. Just as he’d willed. He lifted his hand and stared at it.

He’d done that with nothing more than a bit of blood, and a bit of will.

“Oh, yes,” Malfoy said softly, from a distance that was at once far away and too close. Harry turned to him and licked his lips at the burn in Malfoy’s eyes. “Not even good. _Great_.”


	2. Chapter 2

Harry woke with a start, and snapped his hand down on his wand. Malfoy was standing over his bed, his eyes glimmering in the faint light from the walls as he looked at Harry.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with your instincts,” Malfoy muttered, and held out his hand. “Come on, it will be midnight in a minute.”

“And you said there was no power from ambient magic to Dark Arts,” Harry muttered, as he stood up and yanked on his robes from beside the bed. Malfoy had insisted they go to bed early. He hadn’t mentioned anything about getting up in the middle of the night.

“Midnight is symbolically significant _for you_ ,” Malfoy corrected. He’d stepped out into the middle of the outer room, but he seemed to have no problem standing there and watching Harry dress. “Because your perception of the Dark Arts associates them with literal darkness. Until we can get past that barrier, then we’ll need to do the spells at times you think will make them more powerful.”

Harry scowled. “I do _not_ think that midnight is symbolically significant,” he muttered, but he flung the covers back and followed Malfoy. He found him standing in the middle of a circle of what seemed to be obsidian, set so flush with the floor that it was perfectly smooth.

“Is that for you or me?” Harry asked, jerking his head at the circle.

“You’re learning,” Malfoy said, with a smile that Harry couldn’t interpret. “It’s for both of us. I enjoy it. You think black matters.” He held out his hand.

Harry swallowed and stepped into the circle with Malfoy, clutching his hand hard when there was a sudden buzz of magic from the black rock. Malfoy only nodded as if he wasn’t surprised by Harry’s surprise.

“You knew not to touch the stones, at least,” he said, and then faced the center of the circle. There was a symbol carved on the floor, but Harry had no time to see what it was before Malfoy moved his hand again and all the lights went out.

Harry stood in silence, in the darkness, feeling pressure land on his head. It was magic, he thought. He had sometimes felt the same thing when a curse was cast or he was in the presence of a dragon.

“You can feel it? Good. That’s one skill I don’t need to teach you.”

“It feels like ordinary magic. You said I would be able to tell the difference between Dark Arts and—”

“Yes, when you’ve had some training. For now, shush.”

Harry sealed his lips and stood there disobligingly, hearing Malfoy murmuring to himself. There was a sliding bead of wetness down the side of Harry’s face at one point, and he tried to move, but Malfoy held him still with a grip on his elbow. “Only tears and blood I’ve saved up. They make a potent mixture.”

“What magic are you trying to make happen?” Harry hissed back, wincing a little when the darkness around them seemed to object to being broken.

“A way to show you what the Dark Arts means.”

Harry didn’t have the time to retort. The world around them suddenly brightened, but Harry couldn’t see the room, or the ritual circle they supposedly stood in the middle of, or anything but the scene that was in front of him.

It looked like Malfoy had somehow transported them outside. Harry saw a bright, soft garden in front of them, the grass and the trees both glowing with dew and sunlight. It seemed to be early morning. A woman in a set of white robes—no, wait, a white gown that looked like it was made of lace—was kneeling in front of an altar, her hands uplifted and clasped. There was a pale blue flower between her fingers. Harry didn’t know what kind it was.

The woman breathed, her eyes shut, all of her concentration apparently bent on the flower. Harry wanted to stir, but he seemed to be nothing but a watching pair of eyes. He couldn’t even glance to the side to see if Malfoy was still there.

The woman stood up, eyes still closed, and let the flower fall to the ground. Then she slashed her hand with what appeared to be one of her nails. Harry started. He watched as blood dripped from the cut and she moved her hand in a circle, so that the blood covered the altar.

There was a slight, sharp sound, and the altar quivered as if a mist had started rising from it. Harry cocked his head. There was a strange feeling in the air. Like an atmosphere. A metallic taste on his tongue, and even along his skin. He hadn’t known his skin could taste anything, before this.

“You feel that?” Malfoy hissed.

The woman turned around and opened her eyes, and Harry gasped. She was Narcissa Malfoy, although much younger than Harry had ever seen her. But he couldn’t mistake that pale hair or proud, haughty face.

“I did,” he muttered as the vision faded away, and he found himself standing in the ritual circle again. He shook his head and glanced sideways at Malfoy. “What was she asking for?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Malfoy said. “What matters is that you need to have that feeling in mind when you’re trying to determine if something is Dark magic or ambient magic.”

“Does it always feel like that? It’s never influenced by what someone’s trying to do or whether they’re using blood or something else?”

“An intelligent question, Harry.” Malfoy nodded to him and stepped out of the circle. “Come. We’ll discover the answer together.”

*

Harry had to admit that he was losing track of the days and nights he had spent under Malfoy’s tutelage.

There was no change of light or darkness in the rooms. Malfoy simply said when they should sleep, when it was midnight in the world outside and when it was noon, or time for breakfast, or time to wake up. Harry adapted. He’d worked strange schedules before, when he was on some cases.

If he could think of this as another kind of case, then he thought he would adapt best. He was here to finish something distasteful to him. It was the same with tracking down someone who had murdered another wizard, or disrupting a Dark magic ritual—

Wait. No. He couldn’t think that way anymore. Harry shook his head a little and looked up from where he was brewing a potion that had his own tears as the primary ingredient. Malfoy had taught him a spell that made him cry often enough to fill the cauldron.

“Is something wrong, Harry?”

Malfoy looked at him from across the room, holding a glass of wine to his lips. For some reason, he was wearing his Starling robes again, the dark blue ones with the silver stars of light against the darkness. Harry looked at him and licked his lips, then turned back to the potion.

“No, Draco,” he said softly.

As long as he could call the man “Draco” outside his head and “Malfoy” within, then Harry was positive he was still holding on to some essential truth.

*

Harry learned.

He learned the few Dark Arts spells that actually had incantations, mostly ones that were meant to open a wound or cause someone to cry, like the one for the potion Malfoy had taught him, or strengthen the will. They were about gathering the raw ingredients that one needed for Dark magic, Malfoy said dismissively, flicking his fingers as Harry watched blood well from his leg. Not as important as the pure will.

And that will, Malfoy made Harry demonstrate again and again. He had to throw off the Imperius Curse when Malfoy cast it. He had to stand in the ritual circle while Malfoy lit the stones with fire and circled him, chanting. Apparently fire and chanting were some of the ways that Malfoy built up his own confidence, the symbolic things _he_ felt were significant.

Harry couldn’t say that he noticed the promised increase in his will at all. But if Malfoy needed that to feel comfortable teaching him, then Harry would accept it.

Harry learned what inheritance rituals were (all about making sure that no one could successfully challenge your will in or out of court), what soul-growth rituals were (about atoning after you’d murdered someone), what creation rituals were (about pulling a shape from your imagination into the world and then giving it enough power to stay there instead of come unshaped like a Transfiguration). He could feel Malfoy smiling every time he correctly answered questions or wrote essays about them.

Because Malfoy actually _did_ assign essays, exactly as if he were a professor at Hogwarts.

And Harry supposed his own view of magic was softening a little bit. There was nothing terrible about blood magic, at least if you were using it to make sure your children couldn’t fight over your inheritance, and Voldemort could have used something like the soul-growth ritual.

He told Malfoy that, because he thought it would impress him, his own changing view of Dark magic. Malfoy stirred the potion he was making with one finger, feeding it skin, apparently. His eyes locked on Harry.

“You _know_ ,” he said. “But you don’t believe. Not yet.”

“I believe that it isn’t wrong, Malf—Draco,” Harry said, and cursed himself a little as he watched Malfoy’s eyebrows go up. He hadn’t slipped up on his name before. “I don’t know what else I can say to convince you! I know what it feels like, and I can see that it’s silly to arrest wizards who are using their own blood for potions or witches who are conducting their own rituals, and I won’t make a mistake like I did with the Sunderstars again—”

“You’re still not calling me by my first name,” Malfoy said calmly. “Not all the time, not in your own mind. And that’s the important one, you know. The biggest test. You obey me when I tell you to do something. I don’t want obedience. I want _acceptance_.”

His eyes shone like the blue-black crystal he had used to test Harry. Harry swallowed a few times, and finally managed to say, “I don’t know what the difference between them is, at least when it comes to your teaching.”

“There’s one kind of Dark magic we haven’t covered,” Malfoy said, disregarding that in a way Harry thought he shouldn’t. “The kind two people can raise together.”

“But I thought we did. We talked about brewing potions together, and you showed me some of the rituals that—”

“Not that kind.” Malfoy paused to take the potion off the flame and set it carefully out of harm’s way on the edge of the little half-wall that cut the kitchen off from the rest of his rooms. Then he strode towards Harry and stopped a few feet away. “The kind that comes from the mingling of two bodies.”

Harry felt as though someone had moved the flame from beneath Malfoy’s cauldron to his cheeks. He coughed. “You’re talking about sex magic.”

“Yes. I told you that was a subset of the Dark Arts.”

“Yes, but—that’s not the same as saying that I should _practice_ it!”

“I think you need to,” Malfoy said, unswerving. “If you could have accepted me and called me by my first name without it, I wouldn’t suggest a sex ritual. But it’s perfectly obvious that you can’t. So. Come here, _Harry_.”

Harry stood where he was, and shook his head. “This is crazy, Mal—”

“You don’t understand Dark Arts,” Malfoy said, his voice as soft as his mother’s face in the ritual image he’d shown Harry. “If you did, then you wouldn’t be this bloody hard to convince. And all I have to do is go back to Madam Kellen and tell her that you don’t understand, and what is she going to do?”

That much was perfectly obvious to Harry. He ground his teeth. “Not let me have my job back.”

“That’s right.” Malfoy’s smile was smug as he extended his hand yet again. “Come here. I promise that it’s not going to be what you think,” he added, as Harry still hesitated. “It’ll take place in your head, be a _feeling_ , like the one you got when you watched my mother perform that ritual. But it’ll feel real, and right. And if that doesn’t persuade you to trust me, then nothing will.”

Harry swallowed and slowly moved towards Malfoy. He’d used George’s Daydream Charms, he argued to himself as he took Malfoy’s hand; this wasn’t going to be any different, surely.

And anyway, he was only here so he could get his job back. What he did down here didn’t have to _matter_ , except that now he would recognize Dark magic when he saw it.

Malfoy turned him around so that Harry’s back was to his chest, and breathed into his ear, “Concentrate on me. Summon up all that will I _know_ you have, even though you don’t like showing it to me half the time.” He brushed his head across Harry’s forehead at the same moment as the rest of the room disappeared into darkness again. “Think of me, Harry.”

Harry swallowed and raised his will the way Malfoy had taught him, soaring up and around himself, cloaking them both. The darkness ceased to bother him. The sensation of the floor beneath his feet vanished. He was drifting in the darkness with Malfoy, and the only thing that mattered was Malfoy’s tickling hair against his cheek, and the arms wrapped around him, and the hand that roamed gently up and down his thigh.

“Call me Draco.”

Malfoy’s voice was everywhere, echoing in the darkness. Harry tilted his head back a little further, to get more hair, and said, “Draco.”

“Mean it. Say it in your head. Say it aloud. Come to believe in what I am and what I could be.”

Harry didn’t have the slightest idea what he meant, and really did want to say that. But instead, he took a deep, restrained breath, and managed to murmur, “Draco.” At the same time, he decided that he would think of _Draco’s_ arms around him, and _Draco’s_ hair almost falling into his mouth, and Draco made a soft sound and tightened his grasp.

“That’s it. I can feel it. Can’t you feel it?”

Harry could. But this was wholly unlike the Dark Arts he’d _learned_ how to feel. It was a silken, stretching cocoon of warmth, slipping around him and overwhelming him, making it hard to breathe.

“Yes,” said Draco into his ear, and Harry’s breathing became raspy and hoarse as he felt the warmth settle more into him. “I want you to picture a bedroom, and bring it to life. Can you do it? Not the one we have here. Not the one you have at your house. I want you to imagine a new one.”

Harry reached out to the magic, the power of imagination, that hovered around him. Them. It was around him and Draco both. He conjured it with the power of his will, and the darkness bent and twisted and flowed away. Instead, they were in a bright space with green walls and a bed in front of them that had green curtains all around it.

“I might have known you were a secret Slytherin at heart,” Draco murmured into his ear. “How soft are the sheets? You can feel them, Harry. You _know_.”

Harry reached out and trailed his hand down the sheets, still expecting to touch nothing until his hand actually collided with the fabric. He gasped. “Silk. Or what I think silk would feel like. I’ve—never had silken sheets.”

“Then I’m glad that I could introduce you to them.” Draco’s voice drifted around him, present and not present, but touching the bed delicately. Harry watched as the carved wooden sides of it grew deeper, like the sides of a sleigh, looming over the sheets. “And you can see me there, can’t you?”

Harry stared, and blinked. Yes. Draco was there. He formed, lying on the sheets. And he was naked. His body was covered with the small silver scars from the _Sectumsempra_ curse Harry had cast on him long ago, and his hands shaped and lifted his cock, and Harry felt his mouth water as he saw the length and pinkness of it.

“I can see you,” he whispered.

“Keeping in mind that this is will and imagination and desire,” Draco said into his ear, “come over there and sit down on me.”

“I—I’ve never done something like this before. I’m not ready—”

“If you imagine yourself ready, you are.”

Harry swallowed, and pulled in his will again, imagining the sensations as hard as he could. He knew he would have to be slick and relaxed and open, and probably soaked in oil or some other potion. But he’d never been like that before. _Could_ he imagine it?

 _You can do anything that you will yourself to do,_ Draco’s voice said in his head, hissing.

And because of that, because he refused to allow himself to be defeated by imagining sex, of all things, Harry did imagine it. In his head, he was confident, and proud, and just as hard as Draco, and ready to take him in. He willed the mental incarnation of himself to stride over and sit down on Draco’s cock.

And he did. He was seeing it from outside, as if he was once again a watching pair of eyes, and he watched himself—surely he wasn’t _that_ tall, with hair _that_ dark—walk over and sink down onto Draco.

Draco’s eyes rolled back in his head, which was pleasing.

“You have no idea,” Draco said.

But Harry thought his voice was too strong and normal, so he imagined that he was bobbing along on top of Draco, and that that shut him up. And it did. Draco’s eyes were clouding, glazing with passion, as Harry rode him.

As he had imagined the sensations of himself open and loose and soaking, Harry imagined the sensations of pleasure. They weren’t there, but they _were,_ if they imagined they were. That was what Draco had taught him. That was the power of it. He watched his own head tossing back, and his body riding the furious waves of thrusting, and making Draco’s body move in its own rhythm.

And the pleasure was there, all around them, heating up the darkness, curling and striking with claws that wrenched an orgasm out of both of them. Harry saw Draco shudder and jerk, he saw himself bend down with hands placed flat on the bed to brace himself, and he heard them both shout, distant and faint, but as loud as they needed to be.

In the aftermath, as the bed and the images of themselves faded and wavered and grew hazy, Harry floated there, breathing. He felt that piercing tickle of the Dark Arts on his skin and his tongue again. He wondered what they’d created, other than a picture that had gone.

“Do you trust me now?” Draco whispered to him.

Harry swallowed. They had made that together, and if Draco ever tried to tease Harry about it, he would implicate himself, too. Same thing if he ever tried to brag to someone else that he had tricked _the_ Harry Potter.

And…they had made that together.

“Yes,” he whispered back.

Abruptly they were out of the darkness, and once again in the light of the rooms. Harry blinked and turned around to find that Draco was bowing his head to him.

“I’ve taught you as much as I can about the Dark Arts,” he said. “I can tell Madam Kellen that she’s welcome to give you your job back, and that I’m sure you’ll never disrupt another inheritance ritual, or any other kind of Dark ritual, without permission.”

His arms were at his sides. He could walk away, Harry knew. In fact, Draco was already turning to go back to the potion he’d set aside to invite Harry into the darkness.

But no one had _ever_ done that for Harry. He’d had sex, but never with a man. Never in his mind. Never in a way that left him with flesh-deep certainty that the other person had been so _involved_ with it, that if Draco hadn’t been there with him and imagining things in exactly that way, it would have failed.

“I’d like to stay a little longer.”

Draco paused and looked over his shoulder, face bone-smooth with amusement. “What did I tell you, Harry? Have a little faith in me. When I said that I’ve taught you as much about the Dark Arts as I can, I meant it.”

“I know that,” Harry said. “But—you didn’t say anything about what else we can learn _together_.”

Draco paused, his eyebrows rising higher and higher. Then he said, “It’s not all going to be as wild as that was. Or as pleasant. I can assure you of that. I can’t even promise that an Auror and a Starling are going to be able to spend a lot of time together.”

Harry just nodded. “I know that. But you also told me that the Dark Arts weren’t easy, and—you said something the other day about Dark Arts being banned by the Ministry because of fear and weakness. I want to—change that. I think this is something that Muggleborns, and other wizards who never heard of it, ought to have a chance to know about. I think you should be honored, not forced to live in the Department of Mysteries and not have them acknowledge your existence. I think—listen.”

His mouth was very dry. But Draco stood still and watched him attentively, and that gave Harry the courage to go on.

“Madam Kellen gave us Auror trainees a lecture, once, when we were first being accepted by the Ministry and inducted into our duties. She said that we were justice’s voice, that we had to be the ones to speak for criminals’ victims and magical creatures and others who couldn’t speak for themselves. Now I know that my voice was saying the wrong thing at least half the time. Or maybe more. I talked a lot about Dark Arts without understanding what they were. Will you—give me the chance to speak up and do justice for you and yours?”

Draco was gaping at him now. Harry had to admit it felt good to startle his teacher. He stood there and looked Draco in the eye, and Draco slowly closed his mouth and began to smile. It was the first wide, genuine smile that Harry thought he’d ever seen from him.

“It won’t be easy.”

“Because _that’s_ ever stopped me.” Harry grinned back. “Have a little faith in me, Draco.”

Draco dipped his head and came up to wrap an arm around his neck and kiss him for the first time. It was clashing teeth and dipping tongues and wet lips and pleasure that _wasn’t_ in his imagination, and Harry enjoyed it very much.

“I think,” Draco said, stepping back at last, “that we could use a little time before we go talk to Madam Kellen about this. I can finish my potion. We can—imagine possibilities, if you will. They’ll take a lot of work to envision.” He gave Harry a long, slow, pointed look.

“I can just imagine that they will,” Harry said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

**The End.**


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